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The termticket can mean different things in relation toelections of councils or legislative bodies. First, it may refer to a singleelection choice which fills more than onepolitical office or seat. For example, inGuyana, the candidates forPresident andParliament run on the same "ticket", because they are elected together on a singleballotquestion — as a vote for a givenparty-list in the Parliamentary election counts as a vote for the party's corresponding presidential candidate — rather than separately.
A ticket can also refer to apolitical group orpolitical party. In this case, the candidates for a given party are said to be running on the party's ticket. "Straight party voting" (most common in someU.S. states) is voting for the entire party ticket, including every office for which the party has a candidate running.[1] Particularly in the era of mechanicalvoting machines, it was possible to accomplish this in many jurisdictions by the use of a "party lever" which automatically cast a vote for each member of the party by the activation of a single lever. "Ticket splitters" are people who vote for candidates from more than onepolitical party when they vote for public offices, voting on the basis of individual personalities and records instead of on the basis of party loyalties.
While a ticket usually does refer to a political party, they are not necessarily the same. In rare cases, members of a political party can run against their party's official candidate by running with a rival party's ticket label or creating a new ticket under an independent orad hoc party label depending on the jurisdiction's election laws. Depending on the party's rules, these rogue members may retain the membership of their original party. Thus two individuals from one political party can oppose each other under different tickets. This was the case forTaiwanese politicianJames Soong, who withdrew from theKuomintang and ran against its official candidate,Lien Chan, for election as President inthe 2000 elections; in the subsequent election in2004, Soong ran as Lien'srunning mate.
Political party factions may also sponsor tickets inprimary elections.[2] When that occurs, several candidates, usually one for each office for which the party's nomination is being contested in the primary, endorse one another and may make joint appearances and shareadvertising with the goal of securing the party's nomination for the office each is seeking for all ticket members. This system was frequently seen in the "Solid South" era in theSouthern United States when there was no effectivetwo party system and victory in the Democratic Party primary was considered to be "tantamount to election".
As well in Australia, the variant of STV used for the Commonwealth upper houses and state upper houses may allow voters to mark a preference for a "ticket" (party slate) and not have to mark preferences for individual candidates. A vote marked for a ticket is used to elect just one candidate for the party.[3]
